098 · FREEDOM FORCE

• Back of the Box
• Manual
• Introductions
• Overview
  • Players assume the role of an anti-terrorist gunman who must kill terrorists without shooting any of their hostages.
• Developer
  • Sunsoft - Spy Hunter, Sky Kid (Kinda)
    • In the manual they show Platoon and Xenophone, two games that we won’t get until December 1988
• Gameplay
  • That Opening Intro and title screen
  • The screen scrolls from left to right, with terrorists or hostages popping out of windows and doors.
    • Different Locations
  • 80s Tropes
    • Rad Rex and Manic Jackson
    • Guerilla Terminator Squad
  • Unlike other shooters, the powerups (being either energy, ammo or weapons) are obtained by shooting the lower-right box when an item appears there.
  • bonus game is a word game similar to Hangman (called Person), in which the player shoots letters to uncover the word.
  • Secret Word Special Offer - Freedom Force Self-Adhesive Decal Set
  • Music
• Sequels and Spinoffs
  • The game was released in arcades on the Nintendo Vs. System as Vs. Freedom Force.
• EGL
  • Hogan’s Alley

Auto-generated transcript. Each paragraph starts with its timestamp. Speakers are not identified.

00:00 Freedom Force, a frighteningly real tale of international terror.

00:20 And welcome to NEStalgia, a chronological exploration of every NES game released in North America. I'm Mike. I'm Sam. I'm Sean. And I'm Joe. Guys, today we are talking about Freedom Force, apparently based on a true story. You didn't hear about that? Yeah, I guess I didn't hear about that, but I don't know, maybe it was.

00:45 It absolutely was not. I think that's a little weird for the back of the box, but that's the risk that we take, reading the backs of boxes. We never know what we're going to get, and that's what we got this time. But before we start talking about Freedom Force as a game and everything like that, I think that we should cover something that has been on everyone's mind. And that is the NES Zapper in general. Where has it been? We haven't had a game in a while, and when we do have a game, we had the gotcha game. Oh, the sport. Yeah, gotcha the sport. Yeah, you remember. They're usually reduced to these short, gimmicky, minigame-style stuff. What's our feelings on the Zapper overall? I think it's run its course.

01:24 Um, I think that by this time in the NES's life cycle, it should have been laid to rest. Um, but you know, here we are. I think that there was more potential that they didn't tap into. I mean, as far as I know, they never really get too big with the Zapper again. What are you looking for next in a Zapper game? Well, I know that the one suggestion that I think I've said before is having like one player controlling a character while the other player covers for them. I think that's cool. Or just other ways to incorporate it. I mean, I don't have a lot off the top of my head, but I do think that it's just so accurate. I mean, there are so many options of using a gun. Like, don't take that out of context.

02:06 It's just a gun that you aim at your TV. There are so many possibilities you can do with it. And I feel like they are just for some reason not. Yeah, and also like for the Zapper game that you're describing with like a duck and cover system, I would have liked like an NES pedal accessory that you could put your foot down on to cover and then take off of it. Okay, now we're getting into murkier waters. So what else could the pedal be used for?

02:28 Well, the pedal could be used for racing games. Pedal racing games with a Zapper. So it's like GTA where you have the Zapper in the car, first person, and you're trying to shoot people in other cars as they come next to you. I just wanted to remind the driving Zapper game. That sounds pretty cool. Yeah. So far, most of the games that we have are like... You shoot to the left to turn left.

02:46 Yeah. Well, almost all the games that we have other than Gumshoe are from like the first person perspective of like you either being like frozen in time, like you're definitely not allowed to even look around, or you're not in control of when you can look. True. And Freedom Force is made by Sunsoft, who is a company that we haven't heard much from.

03:09 They made Spy Hunter. Mm-hmm. Sean was pretty hip on that. I like Spy Hunter. Sam? You're shrugging your shoulders over there? But it's positive shrug. Okay, that's good. I think that's one I did not play. Okay. Yeah, I don't think I was not. Interesting. You never even saw it in like the arcade or as like a HTML5 game? Like, it's definitely like an interesting web game. If you haven't played Spy Hunter, you might remember, or maybe not, this might have just been a me and Sean episode, Sky Kid. Was Sky Kid just me and you? I don't remember, but Sky Kid was that game where like you immediately take off and crash. Oh, yeah. It was a shmup that went from right to left, like a manga.

03:47 You're right. And Sky Kid was, it's weird. I said Sunsoft, but that's really more like a Namco game. Yeah. However, Sky Kid apparently like in the NES version credits Sunsoft. So maybe they like either published it or helped with like converting the Famicom cart to an NES cart, but that doesn't seem like a hard thing to do. So I don't know how they get credit for this, even though it's totally a Namco property. They will also go on to, if you remember our mascot discussion in a previous episode that I can't remember. Oh, what's it called? They will go on to develop Arrow the Acrobat for the Super NES. Oh, okay. Yeah. The Acrobrat or Acrobat?

04:25 Acrobat. Okay. He's a bat. He's a literal. Acrobrat would have been cool. No, he's a literal bat. Oh, he's a literal bat. That makes more sense. Yeah. That's the pun. Okay. That's the pun. And then in the manual for Freedom Force, just because we're on the Sunsoft topic, they put out like, you know, don't miss these Sunsoft games. And it's like Sky Kid and Freedom Force. And then it's like Platoon and Xenophone. And I'm like, what are those games?

04:49 I looked them up. We won't get those until December of 1988. Well, I mean, keep an eye out. That's not that bad. Yeah, keep an eye out, I guess. But they're making them seem like they're available for purchase. So I guess they just like printed these. I guess also you'd think people weren't all buying this day one. Maybe like six months later. Now it's a lot closer to what that's going on. They should have just put their entire catalog for the next 20 years in the manual. They should have put Duke Nukem Forever in there. Right. Here's our 20-year plan for video games. And just invest now and get in early on Sunsoft.

05:18 The crown for. I don't know what happened to Sunsoft. I don't know if they're still around. They're still around. It doesn't sound familiar to me. What do you think? I mean, I don't know what they've developed, but the Wikipedia page uses the present tense. There you go. That's all I'm sold. Yeah. They don't have to make anything. Exactly. If they're not dead on Wikipedia, they're truly not dead.

05:41 Okay. Let's get into Freedom Force here. Can someone give me an overview of the game in like a sentence? A sentence is challenging. There might be a couple extra sentences. Okay. What do you got? You play as these two action heroes. An airport is being hijacked. And you basically scroll through similar to paintball? Or what was it called? It's called Gotcha the Sport. Gotcha the Sport. And you shoot at the enemies as they come out while trying to avoid the innocent people.

06:09 I approve of that message. It was four, according to Sam, four sentences. But I approve of it. There were some interjections, but I'll allow it. And I think the only thing I would add is that you are anti-terrorist gunmen. So you're like trying to stop a terrorist attack in an airport. It's important to note that you are anti-terrorist. Well, the first couple times I played it, I was only shooting at the innocent people because I didn't realize I was anti-terrorist.

06:33 Before we go any further, I would just like to say that this has the most bitchin' intro video. Thank you. Of NES games so far. Of many games. Yeah. I mean, it's got cinematography on point.

06:49 It's got some really good sound for what it was working with. Yeah. No, absolutely. Pan up that building. Which I feel like everyone always talks about one of the Mega Man. Was it Mega Man 2? I mean, you were like, the camera pans up. This one did it first. Yeah. And I think I was reading about this game a lot before I actually decided to play it. So I got an overview of it. And to be honest, it kind of sounded like Hogan's Alley to me as I was reading about it. And then I booted up the game and I was just not expecting this.

07:17 The premise does not lend itself to this idea of like, the rest of the game really doesn't lend itself to the idea that it's going to open like this. I'm actually still a little not sure on what's happening in the cutscene. There's like a helicopter gets shot down. Yeah. Who is that? Is that you? No, it doesn't matter. Helicopter gets shot down and like a guy stands over it. Because then your guy, yeah, your guy stands over it. What's his name? Rex? Rad Rex. And Manic Jackson is the other guy. There's a lot of 80s tropes going on here.

07:49 You got Rad Rex and Manic Jackson are like player one and player two. They're part of the Gorilla Terminator squad. Which definitely just sounds like Terminator, you know, the James Cameron film. It's like, oh, that's doing well. So let's put that in our thing.

08:03 And then, you know, that intro and the sound in general just kind of like, it just all feels like as many 80s tropes as they can squeeze into this. I'm surprised that there's no Rambo like references going on. But that game is coming out in like three episodes. So we have that. Basically, even in between levels, you'll get this very, it's kind of redundant because it keeps showing it to you, but it's your profile, I guess, your Terminator profile. But yeah, it lists your profession as a literal Terminator. Slash something else. Yeah, it goes by pretty fast. I'm never really able to like get all that information.

08:44 It's a very fast paced game in general, I feel. But I did want to say that before we move away from this whole like awesome opening, that even the splash screen title with the way Freedom Force looks and everything, like it's all pretty hype. And I'm not disappointed when I finally like shoot the zapper to continue on to actually start the gameplay because the graphics inside the game are pretty damn good too.

09:06 True. Right? I mean, you start off, you're on the runway and there's the airplane itself, right? And then you see people coming out of like the airplane. The longest airplane that there's ever been. With a lot of doors. A lot of airplane doors. It's an emergency plane. Yeah, I guess. And I just thought like that looked really nice compared to what I was expecting.

09:27 Not as nice as the opening intro video, but I think there's something to be said about being able to clearly recognize like, oh, that person is an enemy and that person is someone who's held against their will. They use color pretty well in that regard. And that person is just someone in a bikini who's just hanging out here.

09:45 That's later, but they can't be shot. So like they're just literally just in the game, not even as like an obstacle you're supposed to be careful with their shoes, just in the game for like, I don't know. I think that they're just a strike.

09:55 That's why I play NES games. But going off that, and I don't want to get us too off track, but I think it still counts as like an introductory thing, but this game is way more mature than I expected out of a Nintendo game at this point where there is blood. Do we see blood before? We have not seen blood before. It explodes out of them and then they fall off the plane. Yeah, and I think I had something about this and I can't find it in my notes now, but there's something about the way that the blood was done that they like got away with it because it wasn't like a splatter effect. It kind of was a splatter. I think it looks more like a red dot to me.

10:38 What? It's got like the splat thing. I'm looking at just a video right now. It's like a, it's definitely got a lot of tendrils going around. I guess I don't really remember it, so it couldn't have been that bad.

10:49 If Joe's like frame freezing it, then that would probably look worse. Well, yeah, it's very tame compared to what we have now, but it's something that I didn't see before in these games. I actually didn't even register that. I was just like, oh yeah, it just looked normal, but I forgot that we've not really seen that yet. Have we seen that at all? Blood? Yeah. I think we might have seen it in one other game. I honestly can't remember. I mean, it wasn't even in Castlevania. Yeah, exactly. You know, so that's good. They had red hearts that you collect.

11:18 And also, to talk about the violent nature of the game, is that sometimes when you shoot enemies, the way that they die is different. So if you register a hit on an enemy, they might fall back or just kind of vanish. And then there's others that will fall forward on the airplane. Out of a window, yeah. And for a second, my mind thought, oh, that's a headshot. But then I was like, wait, the NES Zapper would not be able to detect. It's just one box. Yeah, it's just boxes.

11:41 But I think that's pretty cool that they added a couple different variety of how enemies will fall over. I think it depends on where they're coming out from. Got it. Well, that makes more sense, too. But I think it just helps out a lot more than in Duck Hunt, when you're shooting a duck, it always is the same animation of the duck just suspended in a minute with a gotcha moment and then falls down. A very Wile E. Coyote. Yeah, yeah. Which, I mean, lends itself to Duck Hunt. It's a very cartoony game.

12:06 One thing that we haven't talked about yet is that you don't control where you move in this game. It goes from left to right on its own, and you're kind of on guard knowing all the possibilities of where enemies will come from, so you're going to have to kind of stalk out the position. You're right. I misspoke now that I think of it when I talked about gotcha the sport earlier, because that you control. You control that.

12:29 You just sort of saunter at a leisurely pace automatically in this game. To be honest, I prefer this over gotcha. Me too. I thought I wouldn't have, but I think I remember in the gotcha episode, I recall that I didn't like the speed of movement, because it felt like... And it was kind of arbitrary. Yeah, it just felt like a chore that you have to, with one hand, hold down your direction that you want to go in, all to just go in one direction.

12:52 There's no real prize for going backwards. If it had a reason for you to stop, or for you to go back, or wait, or something. Or get undercover, or something like that. Yeah, whereas this one, I thought sometimes the pacing of how it moves helps, because there's times where five doors might be on the screen at one particular point, and you don't know who's going to come out of which door. You have to be ready. And you have to be ready, because these guys shoot very fast. Am I wrong? Yeah. They're difficult.

13:31 You have to as much. It feels like you have to manage it a lot, but I thought it was just really interesting that you have to... That you have some control over that, and you have to really pay attention to your health, and that you can replenish it, but it's dangerous and all that. Yeah, so let's talk about health first, because one, it's noticeable to even have health.

13:48 Sometimes in these games, you get shot maybe once or twice, and you're out. In this one, I think you're allowed six shots, but it's kind of, if you don't heal, or don't get the chance to heal, it's kind of like six shots throughout the entirety of the game. It's hard. You don't heal between scenes. You do sometimes heal randomly. You can hit the heal icon. No, I'm talking about that, but I'm saying when you finish the scene, remember how Castlevania is in my mind, so I'm talking about it. When you defeat the boss of the stage, the thing comes down at the end of that ball, and that immediately replenishes your health, so you go into the next scene with full health again. In this one, you don't get a refresh.

14:26 You have to get it yourself. Well, there are other ways, but you generally have to shoot it yourself, which I admittedly could not do, because it's too fast. A little icon that shows up? Yeah. Within that difficulty, there's more than one fail state. You can die by getting shot too many times. You can commit too many errors, or you can run out of ammo and not have an opportunity to refill. So there's a lot you're juggling, and it's all on the screen at the same time.

14:53 So, I mean, the information is available, but when you're trying to keep an eye on six doors at a time, it can get a little overwhelming at times. And we should explain what we're talking about when we say refilling ammo or getting health, because there's a small box in the bottom of your heads-up display or whatever you call that that will flash with a new item. It'll flash for a varying amount of time. If it's health, it'll flash up health for a second and a half. And you have that second and a half to shoot that box to replenish your health.

15:22 Which is just sometimes not an option. If there's enemies on the screen, you're going to get shot. And I even found myself, just to see if I could do it, I would be constantly aiming at that box until an enemy would come up and shoot at the enemy and aim back at the box. Because I just wanted to shoot the health once. Well, isn't that box also, and maybe I'm wrong and it's something that's in the field of play, but can't there be a decoy and it just makes the game harder? There's one that's called harder.

15:49 That's also, once you get into the game, you can use that strategically. It can make it easier also. Because it makes enemies come at you faster, but you finish a level based on the amount of enemies you've killed. So there are a few times where I'm just like, I just want to get to this level because I'm on a roll, or the longer I wait, the more I'm going to get shot. And I just hit it just to get past level one as quickly as I can with as much health. But yeah, that is another thing where you don't want to just shoot immediately. You want to register that it's not going to make the game harder.

16:17 And Sean, did you mention for the different fail states, the error fail state? Yes. Okay, yeah. So that's important. You get six of those. Yes. And your health bar, I think you have 12, which is nice. But I don't know if later on other guys do. Depending on what's shooting you. Right. Because there's also, they can throw projectiles at you as well.

16:39 Yeah. And what's weird is it starts off, I guess it's not too weird, but the color scheme of how the bars are represented, I couldn't tell if I was filling them up or they were going down. I think brighter, the brighter color was the actual count. Was the actual count. Right. And so for me, it was just something about, maybe it was also. It's weird because it's reversed. Because health, you want the brighter color because you want more health. But error, if you have a brighter color, it's bad.

17:08 Right. And I think there was something about the way the UI is placed at the very bottom of the screen as I'm looking at my surrounding field that I can't accurately tell. Yeah. Oh, I've only got one bar of health left. It's only in the peripheral. And the next one who shoots me, it's game over. Yeah. So I don't think that was the best way to read that out. I do agree. Maybe health should have been a percentage or something. Or not a percentage, but just how many shots you can take left. Or even just the colors being not light blue and slightly less light blue. They're just too similar.

17:37 Yeah. And the ammo, you get an awful lot of it. But I don't know. I never really felt like I was in danger of running out. But maybe I also wasn't shooting that rampantly. Or I wasn't missing the shots that much. And once you get down to five ammo left, I think, the little prize box is just permanently ammo. So you don't have to even. You can just shoot it whenever. Well, that does make sense because this probably happened to none of us. But if you do run out of ammo, the game is over. Well, you can't shoot the ammo to get more ammo. Right. So that's it. Like, it's just.

18:09 It even mentions that in the manual. You're a dummy. Yeah. Try again. But so, you know, we have the health bar. We have the error bar. The ammo bar. And then there's that special target thing, which gives you health, ammo, the harder thing, and three different kinds of guns. You get the .38 caliber, the .44 magnum, and the grenade launcher. Grenade launcher was pretty sick. Except for you kill all the innocent people, too. So there's nothing you can do about it. I think that's a. They're pointing that out to you in a philosophical. Right. Yeah. They're making a statement. It was the necessary choice, but you must accept the consequences. Yeah. But you can't switch from any of them either. Well, don't go for it. Yeah.

18:48 You can't handle the responsibility. Did you guys notice a difference between, what was it, the .38 and the .44? Yeah. I think the .44, I thought, was much easier to hit with. Really? Okay. I didn't notice any difference between the two. So I wasn't able to look into any frame data or anything like that. But my understanding, based on how the manual tells it, is that with the .44, it should theoretically detect more flashes across the screen.

19:14 The hit boxes are bigger. Yeah, the hit boxes. Okay. So this way, if you're slightly off on the enemy, it'll still register a hit. I'm probably just so precise that it didn't even matter. Yes, it is. You could also just call it a .44 or a .38, I think. You know? Yeah. I'm sorry about that. You're a goofball. Yeah. Well, it has the dot there, so I don't want to say dot. Period. 4.4.

19:34 0.44. Mm-hmm. Yeah. You should have mentioned all the zeros, actually. I think it's actually 0.00000.44. 0.00000. You should add a zero after the fours. People know that there's no more else. Yeah. That's true. I think it's a .44 repeating. I don't think that's a .44. Well, it's worth noting that the .38 caliber, I won't put any points for sure, the .38 caliber is your standard weapon. And if you don't know that, that's kind of tricky because you might think that you have some base weapon and then you switch between the other three. Yeah. But the .38 caliber is just going back to normal.

20:07 Yeah. You're losing your weapon. I don't know. I didn't really feel like I ever wanted to go back, but they said the manual. I almost feel like that's another obstacle where it's like, don't just shoot right away. Make sure you look at what you're shooting at. Yeah. Right. Which made it harder to get the health. Yeah. I would have preferred, honestly, a sniper option where you can all of a sudden just do. Just everybody's closer.

20:53 After you finish the scene in the airport, or any stage for that matter, you're greeted with what I'm going to call hangman, so everybody at home knows what we're talking about. They just call it person. No. No, that's the category. It's a code thing. It's person, thing, or place. Yeah. Oh, goodness. That's so funny. I was only a forgetting person, so I was like, you can't call it hangman? Somebody owns the copyright on that? That's so funny. That's a good hint, though. That would make a lot more sense.

21:23 So what happened there is it's like these lines of rows of letters in the alphabet that you can shoot at when they're highlighted to pick words for your choice. Pick letters. Yeah, pick letters for your choice of what you think the word is, and I think you get five letters. Yeah, you get five errors, and it's just a bonus stage, so there's no consequences or anything like that. You get some good points if you get the word.

21:46 But I thought this was just completely random for a game that feels ultra stylized in this world of anti-terrorism. Yeah, it's weird that it's hangman, but it's sort of code-breaking spy shit. They should have seemed a little better. But I don't really know how spy-like this game is. Yeah, and I'm not sure what kind of terrorist organization gives you hints.

22:11 Well, it's for them in case they forget the codes. And also, the code was book once. Yeah, or balloon. Balloon. Yeah, it should have been something relevant to where you're going. But sometimes it is. Maybe not balloon or book, but you get Eugene, which is like that guy. I just think if it was up to me, I would still try to make this part of the, after you've taken down that scene, a new clue has revealed itself, and this will help determine the next place you go to.

22:40 Yeah. That would be interesting. You know, so, I mean, that leads it to like a finite amount of choices for what it could be, but that's the problem anyway, because they didn't program like a hundred different words to show up. I think that this bonus stage is my biggest complaint, because I think it's cool, it's fun, but I think the rest of the game is so accurate, and I don't know if you guys felt it. What do you mean accurate? Like, you're accurate. Your shooting is accurate.

23:07 Oh, okay. But with this, I just felt like I would aim at the A, and I would have to aim like two letters below the A to even have a chance of hitting the A. Like, I would be aiming at things the whole time, and I could not hit it. And also, you know, I think that's probably why they limited it to just like four letters at a time that are lit up, but like, that's just, why I include a timer then?

23:28 Well, because, you know, I mean... If I have to wait, though, for the letter that I want to even show up, like... I do think it gave you plenty of time, if it worked right. Maybe it was just my experience and my friend that I played with. Maybe you're just like dyslexic?

23:42 No, it's the aiming 100, it's completely the aiming, that like, I can aim at the A, I'm going to not even acknowledge that. I can aim at the A, and like, I would think, okay, there's no A, but then later on, there was an A, and I'm like, I definitely hit the A. You just felt betrayed. Yeah, and, you know, but with everything else, I would hit exactly my target, and if I missed, I felt like I missed. But there, I just felt like I could not hit the letters I was trying to hit. I thought it was a relaxing distraction.

24:06 It's also worth noting that it's only, like, good for points anyway. So the way that they tie getting a correct letter is that the amount of time left is 100 points per your time left when you get the letter correct. So having the wait system is just a way to screw you over as well. So I don't really like that they include the timer, and I don't care for points anyway.

24:29 So that's that. Did anyone know about these secret characters? No. Okay. I read that in the manual, but I didn't know what it meant. Only one secret character will appear in each scene. To get the secret character, two numbers in your score must be identical to the number of the scene you are in. So example, in scene five, two fives must appear at the same time. You must then shoot while these numbers appear. It is not necessary to hit a target. Some secret items require that you shoot twice. It's up to you to discover what the secret characters are.

25:03 This remains a mystery to all of us. I imagine none of us did this, right? I can't even find anything. I guess this game is just not even popular enough, but I can't find anything on the secret characters and stuff like that. Maybe they just wrote it down and forgot to implement it. Yeah, they were just like, put them in there. Maybe they purposefully wrote it down with no intention of it, of actually putting it in there. Got it. It's a secret. You guys didn't see it yet? Oh, you must have not done it right.

25:35 And there are other scenes besides the airport, so I think we should talk about them. But after you do the aircraft, you're in the jetway loading area thing, so that's still part of the airport. Then you're in the ticket counter lobby, and then you're in the airport entrance. So you are in the airport for a good majority of this game. You just go to different parts of the airport and then magically wind up at the unknown gorilla hideout. Yeah, which is, I assume, just behind the airport. Yeah, right? Just right behind the airport. Yeah, but it's actually not even the interior of it. Yeah. So that's strange, too. I'm not really like a, that doesn't feel like a definitive ending for me. We should have just kept it all in the airport.

26:19 It should have like, well, actually, the last thing should have been like the U.S. like embassy or something. You know, like that would have been cooler. Are we assuming this isn't in the United States? You think this is in the States? Okay. I figure because they're anti-terrorists, they're just like anywhere in the world. Like it doesn't have to be the U.S. I assume the U.S. They're just world anti-terrorism. I don't know about the gorilla terminator system. You must be, your FBI agent must be filling you in on things. I don't know. That babe looks American to me.

26:45 Who, oh, the, um. All of them? Yeah. I talk pretty often. Yeah. I hope you're not, I hope you're not talking about skateboarding kid. Yeah. Can we talk about this real quick? Like just in general, in every. Airport security was a lot more lax back in the 80s. In every level, there are just, they're animated in the same way that an enemy might pop out of cover. And I get that they had to have different obstacles or different things you couldn't shoot. But every time it happened, I'm just like thinking, oh, it's like, oh, what's that noise? And looking and staring at you and then coming back around. And then, yeah, the kid skateboarding through a gunfight. Right. Like where are the caution codes?

27:27 Why is nobody stopping you? The ones that are on the plane, like they know that they're being hijacked. They just stick their head out of the window. Well, Maya and I open the emergency exit and see what's happening. And then. Well, I prefer to think that in that situation, the terrorists are using them. I'm like. Well, sometimes they are. They are illustrated as being hostages. But sometimes it's just people checking out.

27:48 There's one lady in purple and she looks like she's like a cane or something. And she like stomps her foot down. And like, I'm going to look here right now. And like for a long time. There's also the one that I think Sam was talking about, the bathing beauty, as she described.

28:03 She comes out behind a tree and she's just wearing a bikini. And first off, it's like it was never implied that we were at the beach. So what are you doing wearing a bikini? But also, she's immune to bullets. Yeah. So she's got nothing to worry about. She's got a superpower. What is she not doing taking care of the terrorists? Well, hold on. I guess I don't remember. But if you shoot other bystanders, do they register?

28:29 Yeah. They are. That's what gets your error count. Okay. Yeah. You're right. They get the same blood splat and everything. I guess. I thought maybe just the error count went up, but they didn't animate anything. Nobody wants to see a bathing beauty die, regardless of the video game or real life. I just think it's weird. I mean, if they're using it as a distraction, then I don't know. They should go. Yeah. But I think it's something about the fact that they're not covered by clothing that would make it unfortunate if you shot them. Yeah. That's it. That's got to be what it is, because I can't think of anything else.

29:00 Did it get harder? Yeah, I think so. I think it did. Yeah. I think not only did it get harder, but I was running into a constant problem of not being able to heal, and therefore just an endurance run to see if I could get to scene three, maybe. Yeah.

29:16 You know? I did get pretty far. I never got to the hideout. But I think that... I know. I think that there just needed to be something in this game to help people who wanted to play through it, because it's pretty engaging. There needed to be something there for those people. What do you mean? Who wanted to play through the entirety of the game. He wants it to be... Difficulty mode or something. Oh, you mean something harder?

29:40 Not like... I'm not trying to play a story mode, so I don't need to be invincible. But I know I meant like there should have been something where it's like, oh, this is the easy mode, and you do heal between scenes or something like that. Something other than just like, the only way you're ever going to make it through is if you can shoot everybody in .05 seconds when they show up. These guys shoot very fast. Much faster than any zapper game we've seen. I do feel like as I played, I got better. I never got to level 5. We were stuck on level 4.

30:09 But I feel like if I played a lot longer, I could maybe get to level 5 the way it is. And there were times, I don't know why, there were times that I didn't hit the health thing. I've never hit the health thing. But there were times where I would just regain all my health. I don't know if there's something that happened. I think it's a point 20 thing. So that made it, on those times, that definitely made it a lot easier. I just think, if we're thinking about the other zapper games we've played, I'm even thinking about Wild Gunman specifically.

30:32 That one, even in the one-on-one dueling shootout, never gave me a problem. We played that one together. And it was always like, you could always shoot faster than them. Yeah, but it's not as fun. No, it's not fun. But I'm saying this one was incredibly, almost from the get-go, you had to be reactive. You had to have your gun ready on any particular person. Whereas in Hogan's Alley, which is a similar game with a test of like, will you shoot the bad guy or the cop? That was a test one too. And even that one gave you more time. I just think I need a little more time.

31:04 I feel like towards the end, the timing was tough. But I just felt like once you got the hang of it, it wasn't the... I guess it was the time combined with the amount of things that were on the screen that started making it hard. But I feel like if we had too much more time, you would rarely get hit.

31:20 I guess, yeah, I guess it's just a... It's completely subjective. Yeah. It's objectively difficult, but whether that's annoying to you or not... Yeah, I mean, it definitely could have been a little easier and still been difficult. Yeah. But the difficulty didn't like... It didn't feel like Ghost and Goblin's difficulty to me or anything. Maybe you should just play with a friend. Maybe that's what I should have done. Because, yeah, did any of us play a two-player? You did. Yeah, I played with Mark, who everybody knows now is the phantom other player that I frequently play with. Yes. Whenever there's a Zapper game. And, yeah, we... I'll be honest, we played for like three hours. We were sucked in pretty quickly.

32:00 And then we played some Duck Hunt. But it's easy. I guess what I mean is, is it easier or harder with two players? It's the same. It's just kind of like alternating between. And then like one of you dies, you're out. Oh. It doesn't... I see. Yeah, we're not both shooting at the same time. I guess that's important to note. Yeah, I guess that would have been impossible.

32:18 But... Yeah, it's really just so you don't have to wait for your other person to be completely done. You just take turns between levels. I'm going to give it a pass because it's an NES game, but I would have appreciated it if you could both shoot at the same time. That would have definitely been... That would have helped it make you feel, too, like, more realistic. Yeah, like, you know, you're like two buddy buddies. What are buddy cops? Buddy buddies. Fighting each other. What am I talking about? I don't know what you're talking about. It's okay. It's okay, Joe. It's fine.

32:48 There is a secret word special offer that Sunsoft was offering throughout the game. Does anybody know about this? Yes. Yeah. So, the way that it worked was, it's in the manual. This is your only way to get the official Freedom Force self-adhesive decals. Ha! Okay? Stickers. Yeah. Yeah, stickers.

33:10 And it came with an entry form. You had to find out the three secret words in the game, write them down, give them your name, street address, all that stuff, date of birth, and enclose $1, and then you would get the stickers in return. You still need to pay? You still need to pay. You have to pay. I didn't really need to put a dollar. Yeah. It says that in the manual. It describes it as such, okay?

33:30 It's almost like, I'll get to the joke at the end. At the end of the fifth scene of round one, a special secret word will briefly be shown. An additional word will appear after rounds two and three. In all, there are three secret words. Collect all three and write them down on the special order form opposite this page, and you will receive the official Freedom Force self-adhesive decal set.

33:53 And those three secret words remind me of that Simpsons episode where they put join the Navy backwards as like Eno Nassidano. It's like one of the only Simpsons episodes I've ever seen. Yeah. And it's like, this was all just actually funded by the military to start like an anti-terrorism campaign in 1988.

34:12 But I don't know what the three secret words were. I don't think I do. I know what the three secret words were. Please, what are they? No, this is only because if you go on, if you Google the manual, if you Google the manual, in the manual that has been scanned on, it was someone's- Oh, somebody filled it out. Somebody filled it out. They filled it out, and it's erased.

34:30 Oh my goodness, I saw it. The three words are poop, pee with one E, and butt. With one T. And it's like tried to be erased. Yeah, butt with one T. It's like tried to be erased. Those are clearly not secret words. Obviously. But I think it's funny that we all have that copy. It's so funny that it's P-E, too. That cracks me up. I think the butt only has one T as well. Yeah, you're right. Poop.

34:52 I'm trying to find the- If you find them, I'm going to mail them in. Yeah. Get my piece of the cows. Unfortunately, there is another game called Freedom Force, so it's not that.

35:04 Apparently, there's a level select option here for cheats. I mean, I know that I saw one of them. I can't remember it. I was watching a long play after playing it like a week prior.

35:18 And what's it? Like, yeah, they are out there if you just watch the YouTube videos. Got it. There's a couple of things here. These are all unverified, so believe them at your own will. But there's a level select cheat. You pause the game. Then you press the A button 16 times and for one more time for each level. For example, you must press A on first level 17 times and 21 times for the fifth level. This only works for the first run of the game. So in order to level select the first level, you have to hit it that many times? Yes, but 17 times. Or just not hit it at all?

35:54 For the first level? Well, yeah, for the first level. But I guess if you wanted to go back, you know, because if you're on the first run and you're on stage three, you can do that. Okay. Then for the sound test, all right, this would be very useful if it's true.

36:09 You unplug the zapper and plug the second controller in. Now, on the player selection screen, press and hold left, up, B, and A on controller 2. If done right, the sound test should appear. Press A and B together to quit the sound test. I'm pretty involved. After beating the game three times, when the word congratulations appears, press A on the second controller and a hidden message will appear. Do we know what the hidden message is? We don't. Okay. I don't believe any of these. This is like press A 1,000 times and you'll fight Goku. Super Smash Bros. 64, you know?

36:45 And then beat the game up to four times in a row to see each time a different short ending message. It also varies if you reach the end with the second player. Ooh. So that's interesting to know. We don't know if these are true or not. Can't confirm them. Does anybody have any other stray thoughts on Freedom Force? Just one. I think that items should be in the game and not in the heads up display, personally. That's a good idea. Yeah. It's a lot easier to spot. Where would you like them to fall, though?

37:24 I don't know. Like in the field of play. Yeah. In the field of play. In doorways. Maybe like dropping from parachutes or something. Because I'd just be worried about like, you know, with the hitboxes that like you go to shoot the gun and instead you shoot the person. You know, like where would it be? They would have to make sure it's always programmed so it wouldn't fall where an enemy is. Right. I would say that they would be placed, not falling. Or that, yeah. I like that. But I did actually really like the way it played in the game. Even though you couldn't do it. Well, I couldn't get the health.

37:51 But like, yeah, it should be hard to get the health. You couldn't get the health, though, because it just went too fast. Did you get the health? I did not get the health. You couldn't get it because it went too fast, though, right? You didn't have a problem with like picking up guns and stuff like that, right? Yeah, because it went too fast. Just because like I'm sure if I played longer and got better at it, I could maybe get the health. I liked how distinctively far away it was from the action field. So this way you could just like shoot off, get your thing, go back to the stage. Yeah, and it was different, too. It was just like a different mechanic that I just thought was interesting, you know?

38:17 Yep. And Freedom Force did get one other release. I won't count those as like sequels and spinoffs because it's not really. It's just Verse Freedom Force, part of Nintendo's Verse system. So it went to arcades. And that's pretty cool because then you could play it with like a probably better light gun technology. There's no difference, though, in anything about the game. So, okay. Not a sequel.

38:40 Just Verse Freedom Force. We've seen this a couple times. Yeah. Oh, you mean the Verse. But other times the Verse games have been different. Verse Ice Climber was like one where you can choose between like eight worlds and stuff. And Verse Excitebike had some things going on. So this is a half-assed Verse. Verse Super Mario Brothers is a completely different game. Yeah, it's true. It's very cool. I think it's time for the Essential Games List.

39:05 Sam, we'd love to hear your thoughts. Please give them. Wow, thank you. So these are my thoughts. I think that this is one of the better Zapper games. I don't think it's as good as Duck Hunt, but I think it's fun and it accomplishes what it sets out to do, which I feel like a lot of NES games don't, especially with the Zapper. It can get kind of tricky. And I think it's solid, but it is what it is, and I don't think it's anything special at the same time. So I think if you are a Zapper fan, this is a must-have, but overall, not Essential.

39:46 Hi. I'm Sean, and this is my Essential Games List vote.

39:54 I was just trying to change it up. I edit the end of the episode, so when I hear like Sam, Sean, Joe, I think it's like everybody knows who you guys are. You might as well just talk one into another. You're right. I don't need you to tell me what to do. But now it's been established. This is good. Okay, good. So for, you know, this game, I liked the aesthetic. It actually has an interesting sense of humor that we didn't really touch upon. They'll show what the new enemy is throughout the game, and they'll show you the reason why they're doing it, and one of them is just to get on TV, which is dark in a funny way.

40:33 So, yeah, a lot of the dressings I liked, but I stand by my statement from the beginning of the episode that this genre has kind of run its course with the current technology. They're all just shooting galleries of one form or another. They're not really innovating in any way. So while it is fun, and if it existed in a vacuum and there were no other Zapper games, this would be just, you know, this would be one of the, this would be a lot of fun.

41:05 It's not essential. It's not essential at all. When I first started looking into this game, I didn't have, I didn't have access to the Zapper, so I was just watching a video, and I thought, yeah, that looks kind of cool. But I will say, when I played it with the Zapper, I really, it's definitely not Duck Hunt, but I really, really love this game.

41:22 And I talked about it a lot with Mark. We were talking about, like, should I vote this essential? And what we were saying was, this is something, if you feel like sitting down and having a goal and having a, like, an end goal in a game where you're trying to beat the game, this is a cool experience. So I think what Duck Hunt still has over this is that it's just, it's just, like, kind of pure fun. You just sit down, you just play, you're just trying to see how high your score is.

41:46 You can do better than your buddies. But I think that this is, like, so, so slightly below it that I do want to vote it essential. I kind of had a feeling that I would be the only one. I know I'm, like, usually higher on the Zapper games, but I just think there was a, there was a huge level of polish. It was more accurate. It was, it's definitely my second favorite Zapper game, and I think, I think everyone should play it. I think it's, you can't have a bad time with this game.

42:11 Um, this is my poker face, and I'm going to reveal that I think that this is the best Zapper game we've played. And I think it is better than Duck Hunt, and I think that in terms of everything that has been offered in the other Zapper games, we were talking, like, oh, you know, like, Gumshoe should have learned lessons, and this would have been really cool if it did it this way. Instead, I feel like this is the idea of, like, when we were joking around about, like, Hogan's Alley being a minigame and Wild Gunman being a minigame, and it's like, oh, if only those could have been, like, full, realized games.

42:42 This is Hogan's Alley as, like, a complete game. This actually makes me think, like, Hogan's Alley was just, like, a test run for something, for somebody to make something like this. And I think that if this game wasn't, like, as hard as I thought it was, like, if reaction times were a little more fair, this would have been one of the most fun games I've played on the NES since Balloon Fight. You know, it's just, it's very easy because, you know, you don't have to, you don't have a controller, you don't have to worry about a bunch of different things. You're not in control of when it moves.

43:15 That's a stretch. I'm just saying, like, through the, yeah, through, like, going through the airport, going to various different places. I think that's what puts it above Duck Hunt for me, is that, like, in Duck Hunt, all you're doing is shooting these ducks, and they get a little bit faster, but they do reach a peak momentum. In this game, it's more like there's a reason to be doing all this. It's a counterterrorism point. But also, the, just the way that it handles the UI and the enemies on screen and stuff like that, I like what it chose to leave in and leave out. I did have some complaints about, like, how the health bar is represented and stuff like that.

43:59 But I think as a complete game, this is the first Zapper game that didn't feel like it had any gimmicks to me and was more like, other than the bonus game, maybe, but that was like, take it or leave it. But I didn't think of that as part of the, part of, like, what might make it essential or not. So I think, for me, this is a great game. I'm still not going to put it on the essential games list, though. And I think that's just because, you know, like, I don't think Zapper games can be essential. But you put Duck Hunt on there, right? I did, but I think that was more, like, on hype than we were on, like, episode four.

44:29 I don't know if I'd still, like, I don't have Duck Hunt in my top ten games for what it's worth on the NES. I think it's still my, like, number three. Yeah, but it's fine. I'm saying, like, we like that. I think, like, I need something better than an NES Zapper in this day and age. Like, that must have been revolutionary to play games like Duck Hunt and Freedom Force, like, in 1988.

44:48 But to do it now, it's definitely like, well, I've been to the arcade, and let me tell you, like, when you play, you know, like, Time Crisis 4, it's like, wow, that's a fun game to play. Right. But I definitely think, like, Freedom Force hits that right balance of, like, arcade fun, Zapper fun, and a reason to take it home, too.

45:11 Because you want to continue to play it through because you're not, you know, it's kind of like when I was growing up, I did buy Time Crisis 3 for PlayStation 2 with, like, two Zappers and two gun, light guns. Because I wanted to actually, like, see what happens in those games without giving it, like, a billion quarters, you know? I wanted to see, like, just a version where you can always continue and just play through things, and that's kind of what it offers in a weird way. So I think it's a great game, best Zapper game I've ever played, but it's not going on the Essential Games list.

45:43 Can I add something to mine? I forgot to mention something that really stuck out to me. So at least the way that I see the, like, the big three Zapper games that we had at the beginning is that Duck Hunt really focuses a lot on aim. You know, your precision and your aim. Wild Gunman was, like, so much more about your reaction time, and Hogan's Alley was about, like, quick decision making. Like, your aim was, it was easy to aim at them.

46:05 And I think this kind of hit, like, a balance of all three of those things. I mean, you do feel like you can miss these. Like, they're small enough that you can miss. You know, you do have to aim, like, well. And then you have to have quick decision making because there are people that look like the enemies, and there are people that, you know, are innocent that you don't want to shoot. And it's easy to kind of slip up and miss those. And then you have to have the reaction time for the ammo and things that come down at the bottom, you know. I think that Gotcha had all that, too, though.

46:33 I mean, maybe not false positives and, like, that there are people you shouldn't kill, but you had to prioritize who you were going to shoot. But it was just based on who popped up first because they all had the same reaction time. Nobody was shooting, like, faster. Yeah, and I think overall Gotcha was just, like, regardless of these elements I'm talking about, it was, like, a more shallow experience to me just, like, because it just seemed, like, something about it seemed, like, easier. The moving seemed a little more arbitrary. It was just kind of go to the left, go to the right. It was, like, it was almost, like, easy to break.

47:05 Okay. Where I shouldn't say break. Like, it wasn't broken. It was also just a much slower game in general, and I think that the added use of the controller hurt it. Yeah, and I think there were different difficulty levels, but I think that there was one where you could just run and, like, nobody would be able to get a shot off at you.

47:22 But, yeah, that was just, like, another big thing. Because I was trying to put my finger on what I liked so much about this game, but that's it. All right, cool. That's this episode of Nostalgia. Nostalgia. I think, you know, this was an interesting one because we never even discussed this game outside of this episode, so I think we all came in with fresh opinions. If you like to give us fresh opinions, we'd love to hear from you. You can tweet us at NostalgiaCast, and we'll also be posting a bunch of stuff throughout the week and every week because that's what we do.

47:55 So if you want to hear more from us, just hit that big, fat subscribe button. Best thing you can do is tell other people about the show. We don't do that. We don't talk to people outside of the four of us, so I don't know anybody else. So it's amazing that you're listening, and I thank you. And you're a cool guy. Or gal. Gamer guys at – wait, what was your thing? Gamer boys and gamer girls. They're all over the world, and they're listening to this episode. I'm Michael Esposito. You can find me on at Esposito Film on Twitter, and I'll talk to you soon.

48:52 And then, I'll talk to you soon. And then, I'll talk to you soon. Thank you.